Strictly speaking, only the hermit is absolutely legitimate, for man was created alone and dies alone; the hermit represents a principle and is therefore a symbol. Holy solitude can and must find a place in all human situations.

Strictly speaking, only the hermit is absolutely legitimate, for man was created alone and dies alone; we mention the hermit because he represents a principle and is therefore a symbol, but without confusing an outward isolation with holy solitude, which for its part can and must find a place in all human situations. Social virtues are nothing without this solitude and by themselves engender nothing lasting, for before acting one must be; it is this quality of being that is so sorely lacking in people today. It is forgetfulness of our solitude in God—of this terrestrial communion with celestial dimensions—which brings in its wake all human failings as well as all earthly calamities.

 

We could also express ourselves in the following way: in a traditional climate men live as if they are suspended from an ideal and invisible prototype, with which they are seeking to be reunited as their particular situations permit and according to their sincerity and vocation. Now every man should be a contemplative and live among men like a hermit as far as vocation is concerned; “worldliness” is an anomaly, strictly speaking; it has become illusorily normal only on account of the fall—or the successive falls—of man or a particular group of men. We are made for the Absolute, which embraces all things and from which none can escape, and this is marvelously expressed by the monotheistic alternative between the two “eternities” beyond the grave; whatever the metaphysical limitation of this concept, it nonetheless provokes in the soul of the believer an adequate presentiment of what the human condition is beyond the terrestrial matrix and in the face of the Infinite. The alternative may be insufficient from the point of view of total Truth, but it is psychologically realistic and mystically efficacious; many lives are squandered and lost for the single reason that a belief in hell and Paradise is lacking.

 

The monk or hermit—and every contemplative, even a king—

lives as if in an antechamber of Heaven; on this very earth and within his mortal body he has attached himself to Heaven and enclosed himself in a prolongation of those crystallizations of Light which are the celestial states. This being so, one understands how monks or nuns can see in the monastic life their “Paradise on earth”; all things considered, they are at rest in the divine Will and wait for nothing in this world below except death, and in this way they have already passed through death; they live here below in keeping with Eternity. The days as they succeed one another do nothing but repeat the same day of God; time stops in a unique and blessed day and is thus joined once again to the Origin, which is also the Center. And it is this Elysian simultaneity that the ancient worlds have always had in view, at least in principle and in their nostalgia; a civilization is a “mystical body”: as far as possible it is a collective contemplative.

 

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Frithjof Schuon: Light on The Ancient Worlds

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