The Perennial Philosophy and the Future of America

This mini-book is a chapter from my forthcoming book Enlightenment 101: A Guide to God-Realization and Higher Human Culture. The book looks at the experience of enlightenment for the individual and the race. This chapter begins: Perennial means always reappearing, like flowers which are planted once and then come up every spring. Philosophy, of course, means love of wisdom or, more generally, wisdom itself. So "the perennial philosophy" means wisdom which appears again and again. It has also been called the perennial wisdom and the ageless wisdom. It appears throughout history in all cultures, in all parts of the world. It is timeless and universal. It answers the most fundamental questions people have asked about existence. It speaks to their highest concerns, and has done so since humanity first developed a hunger for understanding ourselves and the meaning of existence. It has aspects of religion, metaphysics, philosophy, esoteric doctrines, occult teachings and hermetic mysteries, yet it transcends all of these specific traditions. It is, in the words of Ken Wilber, "the worldview that has been embraced by the vast majority of the world's greatest spiritual teachers, philosophers, thinkers, and even scientists....it's a testament to the universal nature of these truths, to the universal experience of a collective humanity that has everywhere agreed to certain profound truths about the human condition and about its access to the Divine." The perennial philosophy is, in short, the collective highest wisdom of humanity. It is the spiritual data base of human insight and understanding about ultimate matters. It has been accumulated from cultures around the world, from East and West, from seers and sages, from sacred paths and religious traditions, and from every endeavor by questing human beings to answer questions which are fundamental to human happiness.