Perennialism: How to Crossbreed an Elephant with a Rapier and Call It Supreme Wisdom

Epigraph

"To what is One, sages give many a title."

Rigveda 1.164.46; a short English rendering through our Russian translation from Ralph T. H. Griffith, 1896. Hymn text.

The hymn itself enumerates quite specific Vedic deities. While this ancient line poses the question of unity with undeniable elegance, it neither knows nor cares about the retroactive claim that absolutely all future world religions and their doctrines miraculously teach the exact same thing.

What This Article Is About

Picture an inspired thinker narrowing his eyes with mystical gravitas and proclaiming: "Cast dogma aside! Strip away the husks, and all the sages tell the same story: tame the ego, love thy neighbor, and dissolve into the ineffable Absolute." It sounds gorgeous, elevated, and dangerously flatters our craving to resolve complex questions in bulk wholesale. Perennialism (the "perennial philosophy") elevates this cozy, warm feeling into a monumental edifice: beneath every belief under the sun allegedly lurks one and the same foundational truth.

Yet the moment you ask a couple of down-to-earth questions, the cozy contraption begins to groan. What, precisely, are we declaring shared? A mystical experience? A cosmological blueprint? A moral discipline? Or merely a dozen shiny catchwords like "light" and "stillness," yanked out of context for a tidy side-by-side comparison?

The distance between these registers is vast. In this article, we dismantle how the noble desire to understand another human being can quietly mutate into the patronizing habit of rewriting their convictions to suit our own narrative. We will test grand universal formulas against concrete source texts and return to a sobering question: how to converse with someone holding radically different views without falling prey to the childish delusion that you must both secretly agree on everything.

I. Unity Begins with Deciding What to Compare

Perennialism in its strong form is not merely the observation that diverse cultures happen to share basic ethical advice along the lines of "do not steal and keep yourself in check." Its strong thesis claims something infinitely more ambitious: a single underlying doctrine concerning ultimate reality. The primary antidote to intellectual fog, therefore, is a strict calibration of scope. Saying "we both enjoy sitting quietly in silence" and "we apprehend the exact same metaphysical substance" are not merely different phrases; they are separated by an abyss.

Picture a hypothetical scene: three acquaintances sit around having tea. The first shares how, during prayer, he ceased feeling like the navel of the universe. The second recounts how, forty minutes into mindfulness of breathing, his frantic clinging to a self finally settled down. The third recalls standing transfixed before a painting at a museum, momentarily forgetting what day it was and how many deadlines loomed over his head. They beam at one another: "We understand each other!" Wonderful—human connection has been made. But does this prove their experiences were identical, produced by one and the same metaphysical agency, and retain identical meaning once they return to washing the dishes? Not in the slightest.

Devotees of hasty syntheses love to conflate five fundamentally distinct tiers:

The Linguistic Tier — shared, catchy metaphors (silence, depth, the source, the one).
The Tier of Reported Experience — subjective sensations, such as the temporary suspension of one's customary sense of time.
The Tier of Practice — repeatable physical and mental disciplines.
The Tier of Doctrine — rigorous assertions concerning the nature of God, the ontological status of the world, and the mechanics of liberation.
The Tier of Ethics — rules governing conduct toward loved ones, strangers, and one's own appetites.

The governing rule here is simple: congruence on one tier offers zero guarantee of alignment on any other. Two individuals can fall silent with identical solemnity or yield their seats on the subway for mutually exclusive metaphysical reasons.

Honest comparative analysis does not begin with the triumphant cheer "All is one!"; it begins with the stubborn, pedantic inquiry: what precisely is matching here, and what have we simply painted over in a burst of enthusiasm? If people converge on voluntary self-restraint, collaborating on a project does not require them first to settle a millennia-old dispute regarding the first cause. If the debate turns on the first cause—by all means, produce doctrinal arguments rather than gesturing toward your mutual appreciation for an autumn stroll in the woods. Naming the exact subject of comparison before rolling out a conclusion is the baseline requirement of intellectual hygiene. Otherwise, the slippery word "one" turns into a cheap stage prop, casually swapped in to denote a fleeting emotion, an abstract moral platitude, or the ultimate architecture of the cosmos at will.

II. Huxley’s Potent Intuition

In his famous introductory programmatic essay to The Perennial Philosophy (we examine specifically the introductory material in Complete Essays, Vol. V, 2002, PDF pages 27–31, rather than the entire massive anthology), Aldous Huxley painted a grand panorama: a divine reality serving as the ground of all being, the human capacity to know that ground, and the supreme purpose of life found in unitive knowledge of it. It reads majestically, but let us be clear: this is an authorial, interpretive scheme of collation, not an objective consensus minutes-of-the-meeting signed by the world's spiritual traditions.

The appeal of this idea is understandable. A person wanders into a vast library of ancient texts, encounters an intimidating mountain of contradictory taboos, alien rites, and bizarre imagery, and freezes in paralysis. Huxley generously hands over a master key: bypass the external form, dive straight into the contemplative core! Such a lens is remarkably effective at puncturing provincial arrogance: it prevents one from dismissing a neighbor's faith as primitive superstition while mistaking one's own domestic habits for the pinnacle of objectivity.

Suppose someone grew up convinced that a neighboring tradition deserved only sarcastic derision. One day, he opens their prayer book and suddenly discovers a sincere petition: to remain watchful, to avoid harming the weak, to quell pride. A genuine human shift occurs: he recognizes the other person's sincerity and depth. Notice: this breakthrough does not require him to claim that both of their theological doctrines terminate on the exact same metaphysical object.

Yet baked into Huxley's scheme is a strict criterion of his own: if non-sectarian, contemplative insight into an ultimate singular ground is declared a priori to be the highest human attainment, then the fragments that conveniently fit that template will naturally appear the most "authentic," "profound," and compelling. The remainder of the living religious fabric—communal memory, legal covenants, collective duties, and particular history—risks being discarded as mere outer rind. But for the practitioners themselves, these elements are rarely decorative wrappers; they are the very marrow of their path.

Huxley’s invitation to respect the depth of another can be embraced wholeheartedly without signing off on his metaphysical system. Respecting another’s sincerity is one distinct act. Asserting the existence of a single transcendent Absolute is a separate theoretical hypothesis. Fusing them together leads to sanctimonious gatekeeping, where any critique of universalism is branded as closed-minded pride, and simple human courtesy is twisted into an unconditional endorsement of perennialism.

This observation does not ascribe cynical intent to the author: when contemplation is designated as the supreme echelon of knowledge, selection can favor passages flattering to the thesis. But an honest encounter with a foreign tradition often highlights precisely how radically it departs from your own worldview. And recognizing that genuine difference carries far more authentic respect than forcing someone else's sacred commitments into a pre-fabricated mold.

III. One Experience or Multiple Frameworks of Understanding?

The mere fact that people utter identical vocabulary grants us no telepathic clearance into their inner worlds. We learn about another's experience strictly via retrospective narrative, vocal cadence, physical demeanor, and subsequent behavioral shifts. This is no reason to retreat into cynical solipsism, but it is an excellent reason to quit playing omniscient soul-reader who claims to know "what the other person truly underwent."

In his classic work The Varieties of Religious Experience (drawing upon Lectures XVI–XVII on mystical states and their epistemic status), William James performs an exemplary division of labor: he meticulously analyzes the reported marks of such states while sharply circumscribing their boundaries of authority. The subject who underwent an epiphany may feel a thousand percent conviction, yet an outsider is under no obligation whatever to accept the subject's private interpretations as binding truth.

Imagine a scene: two close friends sit in silence after a grueling disagreement. The tension has dissipated; a rare, heavy stillness settles into the room. Internally, the first friend registers the hush as an unmistakable encounter with the living God. The second experiences it as a profound, long-overdue relief—the dropping of defensive armor. The physical setting is identical, and the mutual warmth is undeniable. Yet if the first slaps the second on the shoulder and says, "You simply don't realize you just brushed against the Lord," he blatantly disregards his friend's testimony. Conversely, if the second smirks condescendingly and counters, "Come off it, you just had a drop in muscle tension," he commits an equally arrogant maneuver. The convergence of external circumstances and emotional relief does not demonstrate an identity of experience. A psychological explanation from outside is entirely legitimate, but it must not override a person's direct self-description without their consent. It is equally fallacious to imagine absolute identity or to declare that because their theological interpretations diverge, they shared nothing at all.

Applying this same rigor to oneself is profoundly illuminating:

First, describe the raw facts soberly: internal monologue subsided, temporal awareness shifted, somatic tension eased, an unmistakable sense of relief emerged.
Second, formulate the personal interpretation separately: "I felt a connection to the cosmic order."
Only as a third step, ask yourself: what conclusions are you actually entitled to draw from this?

The sweeping leap from "for five minutes I felt settled, peaceful, and kindly disposed toward others" to "all individual selfhood is a cosmic mirage" is not an observational fact; it is a gargantuan interpretive superstructure. Differing interpretations do not point to zero common ground, but neither do they magically transform someone else's testimony into a mirror image of your own.

IV. Words Can Display and Construct Differences

Every account of one's most intimate inner life is built from the building blocks of inherited language and cultural formation. Language is neither a transparent sheet of glass through which an unblemished, pure datum can be viewed, nor is it an impenetrable prison beyond which nothing can ever reach.

Jerome Gellman, in his entry on Mysticism in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (specifically §§ 6–8), charts a clear academic map: spanning the spectrum from perennialist models of a common core to constructivist paradigms. A key nuance of this landscape is that cultural frameworks and expectations do not simply supply words after the fact; they actively participate in shaping the contour of the experience itself. Crucially, cultural expectations do not automatically imply fabrication: they can operate like a fine-tuned instrument. An experienced sommelier distinguishes subtle notes in a vintage not because he invented them to sound cultured, but because an educated palate and precise vocabulary train his attention to register nuances that sail straight over a novice's head.

Here lies the perennialist trap. The dedicated universalist parries with an unshakeable smile: "Different words, different cultural filters, but down in the depths, the ocean is one!"

To which a rigorous critic must pose the blunt question: "What countervailing evidence could possibly falsify, or even qualify, your thesis?"

If every similarity is triumphantly hoisted as irrefutable proof of Oneness, while every fundamental divergence is dismissed in advance as "outer husk" or "historical contingency," we are no longer engaged in comparative inquiry; we are staring at an unfalsifiable dogma. A claim fortified against all countervailing material ceases to function as a research conclusion. Once differences are denied the right to challenge your premise, you are no longer exploring reality—you are merely packing someone else's words into your own luggage by brute force.

V. When Sacred Texts Refuse to Merge

The ambition to harmonize all sacred literatures through broad banalities like "love" and "light" founders on the source texts themselves. Their differences touch the fundamental heart of doctrine, not merely the dye of vestments or the cut of ceremonial headwear.

Consider three specific textual moments:

In the Rigveda (1.164.46), an array of traditional Vedic divine names is linked to a single principle.
In the Gospel of John 14:6, salvation and access to the Father are categorically tied to the concrete historical and theological figure of Christ within the text.
In the sutta Udāna 8.3 (read in full from Ṭhānissaro Bhikkhu’s translation with accompanying notes), the unconditioned (asankhata) is articulated strictly as the escape from what is born, become, and conditioned. This brief passage cannot legitimately be mapped as the functional equivalent of the Christian doctrine of God.

Certainly, one can construct an ultra-broad analytical frame: "These passages allow us to ask whether the ordinary human condition exhausts our possibilities." But let us be frank: that is our synthetic comparative rubric, not a secret pact forged among the ancient scribes. The rubric is broad enough to encompass almost anything, discarding along the way the exact theological points for which the authors took up their reeds in the first place.

An adherent of any of these traditions has every right to point out that what is decisive for them is precisely what the broad formula swept under the rug. Erasing those distinctives for the sake of an artificial consensus is an insult to both sides.

Furthermore, a solitary verse or a short sutta does not speak for the entirety of an ancient tradition. Responsible reading records the localized context: "in this specific passage, we observe this precise line of reasoning." It does not presume to issue sweeping decrees on behalf of all Hinduism, Buddhism, or Christianity. And nothing is quite so comical as an amateur patronizing a practicing believer: "You simply haven't evolved enough to realize that your specific faith is merely a stepping stone toward our shared Absolute."

VI. Anthologizing as Stealth Proof

Assembling an uplifting anthology of quotations is a lovely pastime, but it harbors a methodological snare: treating the structure of one's curated selection as independent verification of the compiler's initial hunch.

Suppose you set out to prove that humanity has historically cared exclusively about silence. With minimal effort, you could harvest a hundred pages of exquisite odes to stillness from across ancient archives. But if you quietly prune away all passages commanding believers to denounce injustice at the top of their lungs, conduct rigorous theological disputes, or shepherd a community, you leave the reader with the illusion of an unbroken worldwide consensus.

In perennialist curation, this circular logic is an ever-present risk:

Only passages readily harmonized with unitive contemplation are deemed "profound" and "authentic."
Texts setting severe doctrinal boundaries are dismissed as "exoteric husk" and omitted from the collection.
The resulting compilation is triumphantly produced as proof that all religions teach the exact same thing deep down.

Basic intellectual honesty breaks the spell. Discovered a poetic parallel? Restrain the urge to celebrate. Find where the author draws a line in the sand: to whom is the text addressed? What debates forged it? What prerequisite disciplines are demanded before such a state is entertained? What interpretations does the author explicitly forbid?

Nobody expects an everyday conversation to involve mastering all the source languages of world religions. But one must calibrate the scale of one's assertions: three thoughtfully contrasted fragments provide fruitful material for reflection, not a comprehensive spiritual census of the human race.

VII. Shared Ethics Do Not Require a Shared Cosmology

There is a naive assumption that before people can do good work together, they must first agree on the fundamental architecture of the cosmos. In reality, the capacity to act in concert across irreconcilable worldviews is an autonomous, self-sufficient virtue.

Consider ordinary neighbors organizing care for an elderly, bedridden resident:

The first picks up prescriptions out of a profound sense of religious duty and service to God.
The second helps out of decades-long personal affection and loyalty.
The third operates from a secular principle of civic solidarity and reciprocal mutual aid.

They coordinate duty shifts, pool funds for groceries, and respect one another's personal space. Their metaphysical outlooks could hardly be more disparate, yet the work gets done. Their smooth coordination does not demonstrate that they secretly share one faith. But their radically divergent convictions do not sentence their practical collaboration to failure either!

Trouble begins when an overzealous perennialist attempts to present an uninvited bill: "We are cooperating successfully because, deep down, you secretly share my metaphysical worldview." Practical cooperation establishes no such thing. Demanding that kind of intellectual submission is the quickest way to wreck real-world teamwork.

Moreover, identical ethical slogans often mask radically different behaviors:

The word "care" can mean discreet, respectful assistance that backs off immediately when hearing a "no," or it can mean aggressive, patronizing intrusion justified as being "for your own good."
"Humility" can function as an internal safeguard against one's own arrogance, or it can be wielded as an ideological truncheon to demand that a vulnerable person quietly endure injustice.

Genuine unity is not tested by the syrupy rhetoric of manifestos; it is confirmed in concrete, operational agreements: whose consent is required to make a decision? Who fixes the mess when an initiative misfires? Where is the line beyond which any participant has the sacred right to state: "Halt, I go no further"? Worldview differences do not dissolve into a sentimental haze; they are simply managed with civilized precision.

VIII. Unity as the Usurpation of Another’s Voice

Lofty talk of "ultimate unity" sounds magnanimous, but it easily functions as an instrument of spiritual corporate raiding. Whoever arrogates to himself the authority to declare which of a neighbor's beliefs are "essential" and which are "merely cultural form" assumes the stance of a condescending landlord.

A familiar script: — For me, the historical reality of these events is the foundation of my faith, not a poetic metaphor. — My dear friend, you are simply clinging to external imagery! On the deeper level, you and I are saying the exact same thing.

With that single patronizing stroke, egalitarian dialogue expires. The interlocutor has been effectively disenfranchised. Any pushback on his part will be interpreted as spiritual immaturity—an unfortunate fixation on the "lower rungs." Agree with the synthesis, and you are illuminated; maintain your boundaries, and you are an obstinate literalist trapped in the letter of the law.

The exact same maneuver is routinely pulled on non-believers: an atheist is labeled an "anonymous mystic who simply hasn't realized he is seeking God," while an orthodox believer is diagnosed as "someone merely practicing subconscious auto-suggestion." In both cases, an external hypothesis is violently superimposed upon a person's explicit self-understanding without their consent.

This boundary becomes especially acute in groups, master-disciple dynamics, and commercialized personal-growth seminars. The harder it is for a participant to contradict the charismatic instructor, the more vital it is to prevent rhetoric about "cosmic oneness" from serving as an emotional lever for blind submission to the leader and the checkout counter. Prudence demands vigilance: recognizing that universalist rhetoric can be co-opted this way does not mean every cross-traditional conversation is a predatory racket, but the possibility deserves attention.

IX. What Could Alter Our Confidence?

Any mature inquiry must recognize its own boundaries. If you cannot articulate even a hypothetical observation or textual finding that would force you to revise your conviction of an identical spiritual core, you are no longer investigating reality; you are reciting an article of faith while dressing it up as research.

To untangle this knot, one should keep in mind several competing hypotheses that need not be mutually exclusive:

Partial Similarity of Reported Experience: individuals can undergo somewhat similar internal states despite operating within irreconcilable theological systems.
Independent Ethical Convergence: disparate traditions can independently discover comparable social and moral practices.
Historical Contact and Diffusion: shared formulas and tropes may have circulated across trade routes and cultural exchanges.
Translation Artifacts: apparent uniformity can easily emerge when an ambitious modern scholar translates disparate ancient terms using a single, fashionable equivalent.
A Deeper Ontological Ground: the perennialist intuition proper—that an identical transcendent reality underpins human experience.

Every one of these possibilities demands entirely different categories of evidence and entirely different forms of validation!

Consider a careful researcher who discovers five passages from unrelated cultures describing the abandonment of egocentrism. Rather than proclaiming the immediate discovery of "universal brotherhood," he asks a prosaic question: how do these authors describe what happens when the mystic returns home to family duties, local taxes, and the daily grind?

One frames the return around faithfulness to the community.
Another insists on freedom from attachment.
A third channels the insight into an entirely novel creative stance.

The starting points bore a superficial resemblance, but their trajectories diverged completely. Such an outcome is not a failure of research; it is its greatest triumph: reality proved far richer, thornier, and more interesting than a flattened blueprint.

Personal conviction has every right to outstrip academic proof. You may believe with all your heart in a single transcendent origin of all things—that is your prerogative. But intellectual maturity consists in refusing to brand those who reject your framework as blind or unevolved. Maintaining the boundary between personal faith and what you can legitimately prove to an outsider keeps communication honest.

X. Disagreement Can Deepen Closeness

An authentic human encounter does not happen when we gather around a campfire chanting hollow slogans; it happens when we can recognize and honor the price of difference. Another person's obstinacy ceases to look like simple stubbornness the moment we grasp the vital commitment they are defending against our sweeping oversimplifications.

Consider an argument regarding forgiveness:

For one person, forgiveness means an absolute wiping of the slate and a clean start at any cost.
For another, it requires rigorous accountability and restitution, without which "forgiveness" becomes an accomplice to impunity.

They could easily retreat into pleasantries by chiming that "goodness is wonderful." But it is infinitely more demanding and honest to reach the root tension: at what point does a "fresh start" become an act of violence against the victim, and at what point does "demanding justice" decay into endless vengeance? Such a conversation requires no sentimental metaphysical synthesis; it demands the grit to hear another's truth without attempting to digest it into your own system.

Unity conceived in this light is not a tidy metaphysical answer; it is an attribute of the dialogue itself. Partners in mutual inquiry do not need to arrive at an identical bottom line. Their bond is rooted elsewhere: they listened to counter-arguments honestly, respected the legitimacy of mutual boundaries, and discarded their own cheap caricatures.

And let us be clear once more: this understanding of dialogue is merely a practical working orientation proposed in this essay, not a universal commandment inscribed in every world religion. We cannot champion the freedom of another's perspective while simultaneously compelling them to bow before our personal ideal of pluralism.

Perennialism remains an evocative poetic and philosophical intuition that provokes daring questions and prompts cross-cultural curiosity. Yet it is the living, recalcitrant texts and real-world dissenters that keep us from turning into pompous sages who have mistaken their own hand-drawn map for the rough, unyielding terrain of human experience.

What This Means in Practice

If you wish to test your own resistance to saccharine abstractions, here is a simple, voluntary exercise—offered without therapeutic pretension or spiritual grading:

Take two exact passages. Not grand author names or generic religious labels ("Buddhism teaches..."), but two concrete excerpts from different traditions dealing with a similar theme (such as the taming of pride).
Formulate the similarity in a single sentence. Draft it so that a practitioner from each side could read it and say: "Yes, this accurately conveys my experience without distortion." If achieving this required stripping out their core theological vocabulary, make a marginal note: your summary has already detached itself from the sources.
Identify and name the fundamental difference. Do not smooth it over! Clarify the object of devotion, the ultimate goal of human existence, the status of ritual, or the concept of individual personhood. What you do not know, frankly leave blank—resist the temptation to plug gaps in your knowledge with borrowed internet quotes.
In conversation, offer your thought as a hypothesis. A reliable working phrase: "It seems to me that your words touch on a question very similar to mine, though I am not certain we envision the same answer to it." Leave the other person the full right to disagree and reject your metaphor. If they object, record their objection as an empirical fact, not as evidence of an "unresolved ego."
Anchor your connection in a concrete shared task. Helping a local shelter, watering plants, mending a fence, keeping a promise—none of this requires a unified cosmology. And if there is no shared task, no harm done: you have at least discovered where the other person's boundaries lie and why your familiar terms distort their inner world.

In the end, your initial impulse toward unity may emerge leaner, more modest, and far more complex. Any of those outcomes is a gift: the purpose is not to check off an imaginary box labeled "I have mastered the mechanics of the cosmos," but to learn how to see the real human being standing right in front of you.

Key Quotation

"They have no lawful authority in them to warrant the non-mystic, the external person, in an uncritical acceptance of their revelatory claims."

William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience, Lectures XVI–XVII, conclusion on mystical states, point 2, printed pages 422–423; English rendering through our Russian translation from the 1902 edition text.

James identifies the dividing line with razor precision: the subjective indisputability of an illumination gives the experiencer zero warrant to demand uncritical submission from those outside it. This maxim defends the right of critical discernment for the observer, without depreciating the psychological reality of the subject's experience.

Connections Across Traditions

Comparison	What Allows for Convergence	Where the Boundary Lies
Rigveda 1.164.46 ↔ Huxley’s Programme	The multiplicity of divine names invites a bold question regarding the underlying unity of the source.	The ancient Vedic hymn offers no theory of future world religions; Huxley constructs a distinct metaphysical program.
Huxley ↔ James	Both prioritize inner transformation and the restructuring of the subject's orientation.	Huxley posits a single ontological ground; James soberly limits the epistemic authority of subjective mystical experiences for outside observers.
John 14:6 ↔ Udāna 8.3	Both reject mundane, conditioned existence as the ultimate limit of human potential.	The path to the Father through Christ and liberation into unconditioned nibbāna are not interchangeable doctrines.
James ↔ Constructivist Inquiry	The raw description of an experience and the inferences drawn from it require separate analysis rather than uncritical trust.	Recognizing that cultural expectations shape experience does not automatically render every mystical state a mere social fiction lacking an experiential core.
Vedic Multiplicity of Names ↔ Interreligious Dialogue	Plurality of names and forms offers a valid starting point for respectful, attentive comparison.	The freedom to search for parallels grants no right to impose clandestine agreement with one's favorite philosophical template.

Primary Sources and References

Rigveda, Hymn 1.164, translated by Ralph T. H. Griffith, 1896. Examined for the hymn's wider context and stanza 46; source of the epigraph and a concrete demonstration of the interpretative limits of an ancient Vedic verse.
Aldous Huxley, Introduction to The Perennial Philosophy, in Complete Essays, Vol. V, edited by Robert S. Baker and James Sexton, 2002; PDF pages 27–31. The introductory essay alone was consulted, not the entire volume; source of the perennialist programmatic framework.
William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience, 1902, Lectures XVI–XVII. Key passages on the characteristics and epistemic authority of mystical states consulted; foundation for separating subjective certainty from external authority.
The Gospel of John 14:6, King James Version. Examined as an individual verse; a classic counter-instance to attempts at dissolving doctrinal specificity into universalist abstractions.
Udāna 8.3, translated by Ṭhānissaro Bhikkhu with accompanying notes. Read in its brief entirety; the category of the unconditioned (asankhata) is not a synonym for a personal Creator God.
Jerome Gellman, Mysticism, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, sections 6–8. Read specifically for the academic debate; an analytical taxonomy distinguishing perennialism from constructivism, not a sourcebook of mystical states.

About the Authors

Andrey Zarinsh — author and founder of the United Wisdom project. Explores themes of inner transformation, the unity of traditions, intercultural dialogue, and contemporary spiritual discipline. Instagram: @andrey.zarinsh.

Maria Evilkut — co-author at United Wisdom. Alongside research, she focuses on testing these ideas in practice, observing how principles of unity and mutual understanding operate in everyday life between individuals and across cultures. Instagram: @ilkutki.