Prayer Fashions Man: Frithjof Schuon on the Spiritual Life (Library of Perennial Philosophy)
The title of this book deserves careful thought, for the full measure of its implications may not at first be evident.  Some readers will be surprised by the words we have chosen, thinking that the truth of the matter is just the opposite. Is it not man who fashions prayer? Prayer is an act, and human beings are the agents of that act; whether what they say is prescribed by a religious tradition or uttered spontaneously in a moment of sorrow or gladness, men and women themselves do the praying, and their prayers, be they only imprecations, reflect in some way the kind of persons they are, giving form to their aspirations and fears and affording insight into the quality of their inner life. How we pray—whether only reluctantly and in moments of crisis or according to a regular discipline, and whether our prayers are of a purely devotional and discursive kind or include as well a contemplative and methodic aspect—can be a revealing testimony as to who or what we really are.  Others may respond less with surprise than a ready acceptance. Of course prayer fashions man, they will say. More than a monologue, as unbelievers suppose, our expressions of petition and praise constitute a genuine communication with God, and the answers we receive can bring about real change in our life. As a sculptor fashions clay or a poet words—as the wind or a stream gives shape to a dune or a valley—so do a man’s prayers, faithfully and persistently repeated over the course of his life, come in time to transform the substance of his soul, eliminating the faults in his character, providing him with an increasing strength and stability, and bringing him step by step with God’s help toward the fulfillment of his hopes and dreams. Anyone who doubts this truth, refusing out of pride or despair to call upon Heaven, has only to consult that most dazzling of proofs which is the existence of saints. Each of these perspectives contains an element of truth; prayer both fashions and is fashioned by man, and the writings here assembled will serve in part to corroborate and amplify these important insights. But if we are to grasp the full scope of what follows, there is a further-reaching and more elusive fact to be noticed. Fashioning can refer to a process of shaping or forming, the existence of the thing fashioned being presupposed in this case; but the word also has a constitutive and not merely formative sense and can be used more profoundly, as it was often used in times past, to signify an act of creation, the bringing into being of something where there was nothing before—as God fashions man in His image and likeness.  As we shall discover, this deeper significance is central to this book. "The very fact of our existence is a prayer and compels us to pray," its author has written; "I am: therefore I pray; sum ergo oro." If we could see ourselves as we truly are, we would realize that human nature, made to serve as pontifex for the rest of creation, is itself a mode of prayer, and this being so it is impossible for us not to pray, whether well or ill; even more remarkably, it is only because, or insofar as, we do pray that we can truly be said to exist, human existence being derived, with or without our awareness, from the prior reality of prayer. Man’s innermost being, and not just his personality or character, is in some mysterious way interwoven into the actual fabric of prayer, and without the generative force of his orisons, he would be "without form and void". In short, prayer fashions man in making him real. What this could mean, and how we might best make sense in our own experience!  of so striking a claim, are questions lying at the heart of the following meditations. The author is uniquely qualified to aid us in our search for answers. Widely acknowledged as one of the twentieth century’s foremost authorities on the world’s religions, and the leading exponent of the traditionalist or perennialist school of comparative religious philosophy, Frithjof Schuon was the author of over twenty books, as well as numerous articles, letters, texts of spiritual instruction, and other unpublished materials; the depth of his insights and the masterful quality of his early writing had brought him international recognition while he was still in his twenties, and by the time of his death in 1998 at the age of ninety, his reputation among many scholars of mysticism, esoterism, and contemplative traditions was unsurpassed.