I11

SUFISM AND PANTHEISM

ALL the metaphysical doctrines of the East and some

of those of the West have frequently been labelled
as pantheistic, but in truth pantheism is only to be found
in the case of certain European philosophers and in some
orientals who were influenced by Western thought of
the Nineteenth Century. Pantheism arose from the same
mental tendency which produced, first, naturalism and
then materialism. Pantheism only conceives of the rela-
tionship between the Divine Principle and things from
the one point of view of substantial or existential conti-
nuity, and this is an error explicitly rejected by every
traditional doctrine.! If there were such a continuity by
virtue of which God and the manifested universe could
be compared as a branch can be compared with the trunk

1. ... pantheism really consists in admitting a continuity between the
Infinite and the finite ; but this continuity can only be conceived if it is first
admitted that there is a substantial identity between the ont logical Principle—
which is in question in all forms of theism—and the manifested order, a con-
ception which presupposes a substantial, and therefore false, idea of Being, or
the confusing of the essential identity of manifestation and Being, with a sub-
stantial identity. Pantheism is this and nothing else ; it seems, however, that
some minds are incurably obstinate when faced with so simple a truth, unless
it be that they are impelled by some passion or interest not to let go of such a
convenient polemical instrument as the term ‘pantheism’, the use of which
allows them to cast a general suspicion over certain doctrines which are con-
sidered embarrassing without involving them in the trouble of examining them
for themselvss . .. If God is conceived as primordial Unity, that is, as pure
Essence, nothing could be substantially identical with Him; to qualify essential
identity as pantheistic is both to deny the relativity of things and to attribute
an autonomous reality to them in relation to Being or Existence, as if there
could be two realities essentially distinct or two Unities or Unicities ... "
Frithjof S~huon, in The Transcendent Unity of Religion, chapter 3, Transcen-
de: ¢c2 and Universality of Esotericism. (Faber & Faber, London, 1954)