Perennialism (also known as Traditionalism and Sophia Perennis) compares traditional religions to paths up a mountain. At the foot of the mountain, the paths are separated by many miles. But as the paths ascend, they converge, until they meet at the summit. The lower divergent understandings of the tradition are exoteric. The higher, convergent understandings are esoteric. The higher and deeper an esoteric understanding, the more it understands its own tradition as one of multiple possible paths to transcendent unity.

I was raised Unitarian-Universalist. This idea of one summit with universally valid paths from diverse points of departure resonates with both U’s of my childhood brainwashing and with the universal tolerance gospel it preached. Perennialism, though, provides a depth, seriousness and respect for religiosity that I felt was lacking among the UUs I’ve known, and leftists in general, including religious leftists. The preachers of universal tolerance tend to unilaterally define the boundaries and norms of universality prior to doing any toleration, and will not abide any intolerable beliefs or deviations from its toleration rulebook. Thus, it excludes from dialogue anyone who might teach it anything it is not already prepped to relearn. Perennialism offered valuable modes of understanding inconceivable from within the narrow rigor of objective thought.

Integrated into Perennialism, however, are some doctrines that I cannot accept. The first of these doctrines is that no new legitimate traditions are possible. This appears to me to be a corollary to the Islamic belief that Mohammad is the last prophet. Guenon and Schuon, the fathers of Perennialism were both Muslim converts. Another doctrine is the eschatology of the Fall from God, which accounts for why no new traditions are possible. According to this belief, the world and humankind has fallen too far from God to receive any new traditions, and must therefore adopt an established one. Another doctrine is that only through prolonged strict submission to one of the valid religious traditions can esoteric realization be achieved. Because each path reveals its truth successively only through walking it, and at the foot of the path we are largely ignorant of what we are doing and where we are going, the early steps entail some suspension of personal judgment. Perennialists, though, seem eager to push suspension of judgment beyond provisional trust required for any deep existential learning into blind faith that keeps following authority until the initiate finally arrives where truth is seen. The principle is not wrong in theory, it is just a practical matter of degree, and to my liberal sensibilities, Perennialism not only permits, but virtually demands authoritarian politics.

Today I had an epiphany. Perhaps these Perennialist doctrines about esoteric truth are Perennialism’s own exoterism. Perhaps the troubling eschatology, historiosophy and practical prescriptions are not essential to the core esoteric doctrine. They are compatible, but that does not mean they are integral or necessary. I do not reject any of them entirely or finally, and it is possible that what makes them necessary might yet be revealed to me as I progress. But from where I stand now, these ideas seem like a horizontal connecting belt across converging but as-yet-unconverged exoteric paths, which ought not be confused with a crowning convergence at the summit.

I’ve said it before, so pardon the repetition, but that once glamorous prefix “-post” has gone musty.

But post- carries real meaning. It signifies the dialectical “right but not right enough”. It acknowledges both a debt and a departure.

I am indebted to Perennialism for insights that unlocked some of my best modes of understanding. But that debt will not be repaid in the currency of uncritical submission. I might trust, but I will never suspend my personal judgment, and anyone who asks for suspension of personal judgment is not to be trusted. Anyone who demands it should be fought.