Its doctrine is based on what it understands to be the universal truths of pure esoterism, and its method conforms to the essential elements of the Sufi path.
[2] His father passed on to him not only an admiration for Eastern wisdoms, Islam and the North American Indians, but also a love of the Virgin Mary.
He spent nearly four months in the zawiya of Sheikh Ahmad al-Alawi, who initiated him into Sufism and gave to him the additional name of Nur ad-Din.
[18] While all religions provide this possibility,[19] Schuon considers that "Islam possesses an essentiality, simplicity, and universality that renders it particularly apt to convey a direct manifestation of the Religio perennis.
"[20] More specifically, the Maryami spiritual method is based on the central practices of Sufism, starting with the ritual prayer (salah), the invocation of the Divine Name (dhikr Allah) and the individual retreat (khalwa).
Originally for the benefit of his Western disciples, Schuon focused on the essential and obligatory elements of Islamic law (sharia).
He did so in part because he considered the full observance of the sharia by Westerners in the West to be unrealistic and also because, in line with other Sufi masters, he wanted the emphasis placed on the invocation of the Divine Name rather than on the accumulation of meritorious practices.
[23] Schuon expounds his perennialist philosophy in some twenty books,[24] in which he highlights such essential necessities as prayer, virtue and beauty, along with the awareness of the maladies of modernism, which he contrasts with the traditional, God-centered mentality.
[...] Mother of all the Prophets and matrix of all the sacred forms, she has her place of honor within Islam even while belonging a priori to Christianity; for this reason, she constitutes a kind of link between these two religions, whose common purpose is universalizing the monotheism of Israel.
During several of these visits, Yellowtail taught Schuon and some of his followers several of his tribal dances and songs, which later led the Bloomington community to hold occasional "Indian Days".
More broadly, Schuon explained that "given that our perspective is essentialist, and therefore universalist and primordialist, it is entirely plausible that we have fraternal relationship with the world of the American Indians, which integrates Virgin Nature into religion; furthermore, it can give us–we who live in an unwholesome universe made of artificiality, ugliness, and pettiness–a refreshing breath of primordiality and grandeur.
Schuon himself continued to lead the Bloomington community until the end of his life, and to provide advice to disciples from around the world who visited or wrote to him.