Readers of Sacred Web will be interested to learn of the inauguration of the Schuon Lectures at Respect University. The lecture series aims to:
• draw attention to Frithjof Schuon's work, thereby making Schuon’s ideas available for those who are seeking a fresh outlook to our predominant modern, secular culture, and
• create awareness of the potential contributions of Perennial Philosophy in academia, thereby generating scholarly discussions about the Perennial Philosophy in disciplines that include philosophy, psychology, theology, religious studies and inter-religious dialogue, and
• explain how a perennialist understanding of the metaphysics and mysticism of the world's great religions provides a foundation for deepening a person's faith in his or her own religion.
The Schuon Lectures are held annually, featuring a series of talks by distinguished scholars on various topics related to philosophy, theology, and the Perennial Philosophy.
The 2025 Schuon Lectures, a series of four lectures, will be delivered on April 7, 8, 9, and 10, respectively, by Professor Harry Oldmeadow, and will be preceded by an introductory videotaped message from Professor Seyyed Hossein Nasr.
Details on how to attend, or to view the lectures online, are found at this link: https://schuonlectures.respectgs.us
The following outline has been provided by Professor Oldmeadow of his lectures.
The Journey into Eternity
Primordiality, Tradition, Modernity and the Spiritual Life
Frithjof Schuon (1907-1998) is the sovereign metaphysician of our time, the most authoritative exponent of a timeless wisdom enshrined in the world’s great mythological, religious and sapiential traditions. This series of lectures pursues several of the central themes through which he affirmed immutable metaphysical and cosmological principles and, concomitantly, exposed the fraudulent pretensions of modern ‘philosophies’ and ideologies. While focusing on Schuon’s work these lectures willalso draw on the work of many others in the perennialist ‘school’, René Guénon, Ananda Coomaraswamy, Titus Burckhardt and Dr Seyyed Hossein Nasr amongst them. The speaker will explore three different worldviews which can be discerned in human history, signalled by the terms ‘primordial’, ‘traditional’ and ‘modern’. The inquiry will be underpinned by an elucidation of the contrasting understandings of Time as we find them in cultures which are based respectively on traditional mythologies, the great revealed religions and the modern (i.e., post medieval) scientific-humanistic-progressivist ideologies which came first to dominate the Western European outlook but which now hold sway across much of the globe. Each lecture will be informed by Schuon’s exposition of the cardinal principles and values of the sophia perennis which lies at the heart of all integral traditions. The perennial philosophy itself will come into sharpest focus in the second lecture while its implications for the spiritual life will be canvassed in the fourth.The following notes give some indication of the structure and content of each lecture.
I. The Rhythms of Time and Traces of Primordiality
(Primordial Worlds)
The first lecture addresses cyclical and linear conceptions of Time, taking note of the traditional doctrine of cosmic cycles as explained by René Guenon in The Reign of Quantity, and paying particular attention to his account of the Kali Yuga, the cyclic stage in which we now find ourselves. The lecture then moves to a general consideration of ‘primordiality’, the human andterrestrial condition in prehistoric times which we can partially understand through those remnants or traces which persist into the historical epoch in nomadic and non-literate cultures such as those of the Australian Aborigines or the Native Americans. It considers some of the central characteristics of primordiality, exploring such subjects as ‘the symbolist mentality’, the qualitative differentiation of time and space, the nature oftraditional mythology and cosmology, the theophanic experience of the natural order, the pervasive sense of the sacred in such cultures, and ‘the bugbear of literacy’ which has clouded our understanding of primordial worlds. The lecture includes some reflections about the significance of the ‘fate of the nomads’ in the modern world and the consequences of a reductionisthistoriography.
II. Revealed Tradition as Mediator between Time and Eternity
(Traditional Worlds)
The second lecture is principally concerned with a Schuonian understanding of the religio perennis, the expression of the Wisdom of the Ages in the particular forms of the great religious patrimonies of both East and West. Fathoming Schuon’s peerless writings on religion requires the clarification of a certain metaphysical vocabulary in which the following terms are pivotal: Revelation, Tradition, Intellection, Metaphysics, Mysticism, Exoterism and Esoterism, Orthodoxy. Schuon’s affirmation of ‘the transcendent unity of religions’ will be explained and differentiated from less authoritative and sometimes counterfeit renditions of the perennial philosophy. Some attention will be directed to those elements which are to be found in each and every religious tradition – myth, doctrine, ethics, sacred art, spiritual method, and so on – and to the ways in which a traditional civilization ‘incarnates’ the religion in question. The lecture will conclude with some general remarks comparing traditional and modern societies.
III. Signs of the Times: The Reign of Scientism, Evolutionism &‘Progress’
(The Modern World)
In the late medieval period, the last in which a traditional Judeo-Christian civilization remained more or less intact, the European world witnessed the early signs of a fundamental change in the prevailing worldview, a shift inaugurated by the Renaissance and extended by the Scientific Revolution of the 17th century and the so-called Enlightenment of the 18th. By the 19th century this anti-traditional worldview, marked by the ‘reign of quantity’,had taken hold, and now predominates in many parts of the world. It is evident in such formations as Marxism, Darwinism, Nietzschean relativism, Freudianism, ‘scientific atheism’ and the grotesqueries of post-modernist theorizing. The third lecture explains this falling away from Tradition and repudiates modern ideologies and ‘pseudo-mythologies’ variously rooted in the materialistic-humanistic-progressivist ideas of the era. Whilst ranging over a wide terrain the lecture focuses on the tyranny of scientism, evolutionism and progressivism and their baleful influence on contemporary thought. It also spotlights the divide between sacred and profane science and diagnoses the ostensible conflict between ‘religion’ and ‘science’.
IV. Metaphysics and the Spiritual Life
(The Eternal Present)
The concluding lecture moves away from the temporal schema in which primordiality, tradition and modernity were the structuring categories to turn more directly and, in greater depth, to fundamental questions which Schuon addressed through all of his writings: What is ‘metaphysics’? What does a metaphysical perspective imply for an understanding of religion? What are the inter-relations of metaphysics, theology and philosophy? What is ‘spirituality’ properly understood? What is the relationship between metaphysics and spiritual practice? What is the nexus between Truth, Beauty and Goodness? The lecture will conclude with some reflections about two leitmotif which run through all of Schuon’s work, the imperatives of Faith and Prayer in the human vocation.
Some relevant metaphysical and spiritual quotations from the writings of Frithjof Schuon
Man’s vocation is consciousness of the Absolute.
- The Play of Masks
These survivals of the Primordial Tradition contain a message that is addressed to every man conscious of the human vocation…
- ‘The Perennial Philosophy’
In all epochs, and in all countries there have been revelations, religions, wisdoms; tradition is a part of mankind just as man is part of tradition.
- Light on the Ancient Worlds
That which is lacking in the present world is a profound knowledge of the nature of things; the fundamental truths are always there, but they do not impose themselves because they cannot impose themselves on those unwilling to listen.
- ‘No Activity without Truth’
Plenary esoterism is essentiality, universality, primordiality, perennialism.
- The Fullness of God
The sacred is the presence of the centre in the periphery. The sacred introduces a quality of the absolute into relativities and confers on perishable things a texture of eternity.
- Understanding Islam
‘Our own Time’ possess no quality that makes it the measure or criterion of values in regard to that which is timeless. It is the timeless that, by its very nature, is the measure of time.
- ‘No Activity without Truth’
It is the spiritual, not the temporal, which culturally, socially and politically is the criterion of all other values.
- Spiritual Perspectives and Human Facts
Metaphysical truth, a life of prayer, moral conformity, interiorizing beauty: this is the essential, and this is our message.
- unpublished document quoted in J. Cutsinger: Advice for the Serious Seeker
Harry Oldmeadow was born in India in 1947. His parents were Christian missionaries in India where he spent nine years of his childhood, developing an early interest in the civilizations of the East. He studied history, politics and literature at the Australian National University in Canberra, and after further studies at Sydney University he worked in the History Department at La Trobe University in Melbourne. In 1971 a Commonwealth Overseas Research Scholarship led to further studies at St. John’s College, Oxford, followed by travels in Europe, North Africa and the sub-continent. In 1981 he completed a Masters research degree in Religious Studies at Sydney University; the subject of his dissertation was Frithjof Schuon and the other principal traditionalist writers. This study, one of the earliest of its kind, was awarded a Sydney University Research Medal and later published by the Sri Lanka Institute of Traditional Studies as Traditionalism: Religion in the light of the Perennial Philosophy (Colombo, 2000). Under the auspices of this Institute, in 1990 Dr. Oldmeadow delivered the inaugural Ananda Coomaraswamy Memorial Lecture in Colombo, on ‘The Religious Tradition of the Australian Aborigines’.
From 1990 until his retirement Oldmeadow was Coordinator of Philosophy & Religious Studies at La Trobe University Bendigo where he also taught courses in Literature and Cinema Studies. He completed a doctorate in Cinema Studies at the university’s metropolitan campus, and was awarded a Research Medal for his dissertation. In 2004 he received another university award for his book Journeys East: 20th Century Western Encounters with Eastern Religious Traditions. Oldmeadow has published widely in Sacred Web, Sophia, Eye of the Heart and other traditionalist and scholarly journals, and has delivered public lectures on perennialist themes in the sub-continent, the U.K., U.S.A. and Canada. In late 2001, he was a key speaker at a large inter-faith gathering in Sydney, organized by the Australian Centre for Sufism; the theme of the meeting was the need for inter-religious understanding in the wake of 9/11.
Oldmeadow’s primary interests are perennialist philosophy, particularly as expounded by Frithjof Schuon, critiques of modernity, the spiritual and intellectual encounter of East and West, the primordial traditions of nomadic and non-literate peoples, especially the Plains Indians of North America and the indigenous peoples of Australia, and the environmental crisis in the light of traditional cosmologies. He is the author of fifteen books and has edited another dozen including five of Frithjof Schuon’s works in the new annotated translations by World Wisdom. He edited three anthologies published by World Wisdom: The Betrayal of Tradition, Light from the East and Crossing Religious Frontiers, as well as The Essential Whitall Perry. His other publications include Frithjof Schuon and the Perennial Philosophy; A Christian Pilgrim in India: the Spiritual Journey of Swami Abhishiktananda; Mediations: Essays on Religious Pluralism & the Perennial Philosophy; Touchstones of the Spirit: Essays on Religion, Tradition and Modernity; Black Elk, Lakota Visionary; and Timeless Truths and Modern Delusions: the Perennial Philosophy as a guide for contemporary Buddhists.
Since his formal retirement Oldmeadow has continued his research and writing, maintained contact with scholars and seekers from around the world, has pursued his interest in photography, and has traveled widely to visit sacred sites and pilgrimage centers, and to hike in wilderness areas. He lives with his wife in Bendigo.