"Man prays and prayer fashions man. The saint has himself become prayer, the meeting-place of earth and Heaven; and thereby he contains the universe and the universe prays with him. He is everywhere where nature prays and he prays with her and in her: in the peaks which touch the void and eternity, in a flower which scatters its scent or in the carefree song of a bird. He who lives in prayer has not lived in vain."

Man's most fundamental needs may be summed up as the need for Knowledge, for Love, and for a Way to salvation. At the present time many people feel cut off from any true meaning of existence, and the rush and personal worry of modern life as well as inner states appear to make it more and more difficult to satisfy these needs, to find a fundamental basis of living.

The habitual limitations of current modern thought are quickly dispersed and the spiritual perspectives normal for mankind are clearly set forth in this new translation of Schuon's second book. An extraordinary breadth of subjects rendered in an aphoristic style makes the wisdom of these reflections accessible to a wide range of readers. The "spiritual contours" of various traditions are seen in the light of their necessary divergences, Schuon's emphasis always being on the one hand the essential nature of things and on the other the great question of knowing what aspect of Truth or Reality it is that motivates the entire being of a given individual. For, as the author says, "metaphysical knowledge is one thing; its actualization ... quite another." Of particular interest here are the passages on the spiritual phenomenon of Ramakrishna and the interplay between knowledge, love and virtue in spiritual life.

"Prayer in the widest sense triumphs over the four accidents of our existence: the world, life, the body and the soul; we might also say: space, time, matter and desire. It is situated in existence like a shelter, like an islet. In it alone are we perfectly ourselves, because it puts us into the presence of God. It is like a miraculous diamond which nothing can tarnish and nothing can resist ."