It often surprises me how deeply sunk in phenomena most men are, how much they identify themselves with their own everyday world of appearances, and how little strength of imagination they have... [Memoirs, Frithjof Schuon]

According to the Vedanta the contemplative must become absolutely ‘Himself; according to other perspectives such as that of the Semitic religions, man must become absolutely ‘Other’ than himself — or than the ‘I’ — which from the point of view of pure truth amounts to exactly the same thing.

The knowledge which man does or can enjoy is at the same time animal, human and Divine. It is animal in so far as man knows through the senses; it is human when he knows by reason; and it is Divine in the contemplative activity of the intellect. Now man could not be Divine without first being human; the intellect, in the direct and higher meaning of the word (for the reason and the senses also derive indirectly from the intellect), cannot be actualized, in the human domain, in a being lacking in reason.

Frithjof Schuon